Arda > Arda's Quotes

“-On sharing the love story of the Persian prince Khushraw and the niece of the queen of Armenia Shirin (who were looking for each other but in opposite directions): "Both lovers then departed, looking for each other in opposite directions, a theme universal in its pathos, because we all spend our brief lives doing just that, even if we physically share our beds with the same person every night for years. Always we carry an image in our head of a better person, of an ideal person, which blurs our chances of finding happiness.”
― Fatima Marnissi

“Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“I’ was the last word I was able to speak aloud. I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning, but instead I said, ‘I.’ I know I’m not alone in this disease, you hear the old people in the street and some of them are moaning, “Ay yay yay,” but some of them are clinging to their last word, ‘I,’ they’re saying, because they’re desperate, it’s not a complaint it’s a prayer, and then I lost ‘I’ and my silence was complete.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Clawing its way towards us, the ugliness of the world tore away our hiding-place.”
― Amin Maalouf, Ports of Call

“Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“إننا نكتب الروايات لنقتل الأبطال لا غير، وننتهي من الأشخاص الذين أصبح وجودهم عبئا على حياتنا. فكلما كتبنا عنهم فرغنا منهم..وإمتلأنا بهواء نظيف.”
― أحلام مستغانمي, ذاكرة الجسد

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

“At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”
― Paulo Coelho

“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.”
― Victor Hugo

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“سوف يفعل الصبر كل ما تتمناه دون أن تطلب، ولكن حسب وقته هو وليس وقتك أنت”
― عارف الحسيني, كافر سبت

“I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part -a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game -it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries. Some morals tended to keep people slaves in factories, in churches and true to the State. Other morals simply made good sense. It was like a garden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. You had to know which to pick and eat, which to leave alone.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“لم أبتسم وأنا أتذكّر كلمات ستّي المعهودة: شو يقولوا الناس، لأنّ الواقع هو الواقع. نحن لم نتغيّر عن أيام ستّي ولا شعرة، بل تراجعنا عدّة خطوات. البلد مليئة بالجلابيب والبراقع، وأصوات المآذن تتحفنا في كل صباح وكل مساء بهتافات مدويّة مسعورة عن الكاسيات العاريات الفاجرات العاهرات حتى بتنا نخاف من المشي في الشارع خوفاّ من لعنة أو رشقة حجر أو ماء نار. نمشي بالكُمّ والمستّر ونقف أمام المرآة قبل الخروج لنتأكد من المظهر حتى لا نغضب الشارع وشيخ الجامع. صرنا نخاف من الجامع ومن الشارع ونظرات الناس. صرنا نخاف. صرنا نسمع عن ذبح نساء اتُهمن جزافاً بسوء الخلق والتجسّس. سوء الخلق يعني لباساً مفتوحاً وتبرّجاً، أو قصة غرام وفضيحة، لأن الغرام يعني فضيحة ويعني تجسّساً. هذا ما وصلنا إليه في هذا السجن، هكذا صرنا! سحر خليفة، حبي الأول”
― سحر خليفة, حبي الأول

“هذا إذن هو حبس الدم، حوش الأغنياء حين افتقروا! إن أنت غبت، أو حتى متّ، يظل هناك من يعرفك أو يعرف عنك، أصلك وفصلك ومن أين جئت ومتى وُلدت وأين دفنوك. شيء جميل يردّ الروح وينعش القلب وأنت على باب الستّين أو السبعين، لكن ما قبل، وأنت شاب أو صبيّة، فأمر مفزع كالزنزانة وظلام القبر”
― سحر خليفة, حبي الأول

“يالو يا سيدي لا يوافق معي أن الحياة لا معنى لها. كأنه اكتشف معنى آخر للحياة لا يريد أن يقوله لأحد. حتى أنا لا أعرف. أدنو منه وأقرأ له، يلتفت إليّ لحظة، ثم يشيح وجهه عني، ويعود إلى عالمه الخاص الذي يأخذه إلى حيث لا يدري. يالو يا سيدي اكتشف أن الإنسان لا يكون إلا حين يصير في أسفل السافلين. هناك في الأسفل، لا يعود أحد أداة أحد. هناك يصبح خروفاً ذبج بدل الجميع،فطارت روحه فوق العالم لأنها صارت حرّة”
― إلياس خوري, Yalo

“قالت انكسر صوتي هنيك بالبلونة، منشان هيك ما بقدر حبك مزبوط، فلم يفهم معنى هذا الكلام. تخيّل آنية فخّارية تسقط على الأرض وتنكسر. لكنه لم يفهم أنه حين صوت المرأة ينكسر، فهذا يعني أن قلبها أصيب ببحّة عميقة لا دواء لها. والقلب المبحوح لا يتسطيع أن يحب”
― إلياس خوري, Yalo

“What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones
slept better, [Cloquet thought,] while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking
hours much more.”
― Woody Allen, Side Effects

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird